(Also see Probability analysis of the insurance.aes256 file posted by WikiLeaks)
Information is a valuable resource. It is possible to control almost every aspect of one’s existence merely by manipulating, monitoring, and restricting the flow of information that travels to and from that person. This has been used to great effect by world leaders in history for millenia. At its most basic level, controlling information can simply be in the form of telling someone what they can and can’t talk about, and then enforcing that with some kind of threat. However, it can go far beyond this, as I will try to illustrate.
As technology becomes more advanced, greater volumes of information are produced by the average person, and more devices are built that can collect that information. Over time, technology starts to become integrated with everything, and is less conspicuous. Things become wireless; electronics are embedded in houses, vehicles, greeting cards. People start to expect technology to be there for them everywhere, and in everything.
Have you noticed how people seem to instantly complain when there is no cellular network available nearby? It’s because they depend on their phone; it’s a part of them and they feel lost without it. Your phone is your best friend; you trust it, it’s reliable, it’s there for you, it tells you anything you want, it tells you gossip about your other friends and other people.
Similarly, the cell towers are just these invisible things that are a part of the environment, part of the landscape, constantly feeding information back and forth, but doing so silently and unnoticeably. It’s as if the cellular network – and by extension, the internet – is one with the world around you.
At a certain point, people begin to forget. They forget what is actually going on around them, they forget the implications of what they are doing, they forget the reasoning behind what they see and hear. They forget the basic properties of information, and because they trust technology so much, they start trusting the information that they receive.
Just like a backstabbing friend, the technology you thought you could trust can betray you, whispering behind your back about the things that you do – all without you noticing.
Several ‘tools’ are available that are used to manipulate information – here are a few of them:
- Censorship. The most obvious method to manipulate information is to forcibly prevent it from being communicated in the first place. This is often accomplished with some sort of threat, legal or otherwise, to those in possession of the information in question, such as incarceration, seizure of property, or extortion. It can also happen with a more veiled threat (some type of fear, possibly of the unknown consequences of releasing information.) Another means of censorship is the use of technology in a ‘man-in-the-middle attack’ or proxy setup to actively remove or filter unwanted information. Some governments have already implemented such techniques on the internet services in their countries, such as China or Iran. It is also possible to restrict the technologies used to access information to specific individuals.
- ‘Partial truth.’ Giving away information about something, but omitting or minimizing undesired components. Often referred to as putting a ‘spin’ on something, this method can be used in news outlets simply by changing the headline, length, and tone of stories.
- Disinformation. Producing information that is an outright fabrication. If done correctly, disinformation will appear believable or trustworthy to the majority. This is an extremely useful and versatile tool that can be used for a wide variety of purposes.
- Desensitization. Letting people slowly become accustomed to a shocking or radical idea, viewpoint, or other piece of information.
- Steganography. The art of hiding information within other information, usually secretly. Steganography works both ways – it can be used by whistleblowers to move censored information around without being noticed, but it can also be used to detect whistleblowers after information is leaked. An example of this is hiding a coded keyword in a document, and linking the keyword in a database to the identity of the person accessing the document. This may have happened with WikiLeaks’ Afghan War Logs and the US Embassy Cables – all it takes is a single planted fake keyword or entry to trace the accessor of the information.
- Fear. People are easily frightened, and the reaction can be a knee-jerk response. If someone fabricates or embellishes some problem, and that same someone offers a convenient solution to said problem, people are more likely to listen and agree with that solution – even if it isn’t the best idea. An example of this is terrorism.
Because these methods exist, and many of them have been used throughout history, it is only logical to assume that information can and will be manipulated in the future, by those who end up in a position in which they are able to do so.
“Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
People used to be more reluctant to give out their personal information. Businesses that used personal information to obtain marketing and advertising data had problems with this. The solution was simple: Instead of directly asking people for their personal information, one merely has to create a nice, safe-looking ‘nest’ for some of their information, and they will start to provide volumes of it. This technique is exploited in social networking systems such as Facebook or Twitter. On the surface, Facebook is a platform that you can leverage to communicate with friends. But by using Facebook, you are sending a huge amount of information about yourself to someone else. You don’t know what happens to it after that.
Multiple sources of information about something can be combined to create massive volumes of highly detailed information using extrapolation and deductive reasoning. It’s analogous to how a 3D picture or video is created – images from multiple 2D cameras placed at different angles are combined to produce 3D information, which gives a better view of the subject. It’s the same with little bits of seemingly useless personal information – if you gather enough status updates, you can ‘triangulate’ important details about someone.
- Maybe you practice good privacy and security measures, but have you considered the security of the people around you? They (and their devices) could be inadvertently relaying information about you, not thinking about the possible consequences. At the most basic level, if you tell your boss you’re taking a sick day, and someone tweets about you being at a party that day, you could get fired if your boss happens to be following that person.
- In practice, it could get way more complex than this. Huge trails of information could lead to a logical deduction about your personal details without anyone actually typing them in. For example, by finding out what your most visited places are, the friends you talk to the most, and compiling social networking status updates about your friends’ current locations, someone could estimate your current location by following the patterns and eliminating places that you aren’t at.
- The more information that is passed around, the easier it is to extract useful patterns from it. Social networking does just this.
- There are businesses dedicated to doing this type of thing exactly – data mining operations. Any amount of information can be passed through a computer to get patterns.
- Data mining isn’t limited to social networking – any type of data can be mined. News articles, stock prices, images, web pages… remember that if you combine multiple sources, it gives you a better picture. If you happen to say two similar things on similar dates on two different websites, that creates a link between those two messages, and therefore those two identities.
I seriously question the true motives of WikiLeaks. Many people see the WikiLeaks controversy as something similar to “Government secrets need to be kept secret to protect us” versus “People need to know what their government is doing in order to make informed decisions.”
Some people see it differently. Where is WikiLeaks getting some of their information? I think that it is possible for WikiLeaks to be a disinformation outlet – by letting secrets out on purpose, someone could be gaining something in return. Perhaps it is some type of extortion plot against world governments? Or, could it be a ruse to trick normal people into believing something? A lot of people feel inclined to believe anything that claims to have been leaked. If WikiLeaks releases a disinformation ‘leak’ about some government, that government can’t plausibly deny the validity of that leak, and people will probably end up believing it.
WikiLeaks has avoided being shut down for quite a while, and claims to go to great lengths to protect the identities of whistleblowers. WikiLeaks wants you to send them leaks. This is exactly the ‘safe haven’ for your information I mentioned earlier. By providing a safe place for leaks, the whistleblowers will come straight to them, but they might actually be collecting data about whistleblowers themselves. They could just be gathering information, or they might take action – it could be like a sting operation.
That reminds me… WikiLeaks has stayed online for a suspiciously long amount of time. If any government didn’t like what they had to say, something tells me that they would have just gone and shut it down forcibly using any means necessary. It makes me wonder if it is actually being run by a government.
A lot of people seem to be hating on Julian Assange, which is understandable considering the issues at hand. If I recall correctly, he admitted in an interview that one of the purposes he serves at WikiLeaks is to basically take all the flak that WikiLeaks gets. Sort of putting a face to WikiLeaks, I suppose. Because of this, I doubt WikiLeaks would cease functioning if Assange was removed from the organization, and so I don’t think it’s entirely right to go after Assange exclusively.
Hopefully this was informative… feel free to leave a comment below.
December 2nd, 2010 | 
Written by 
Category: Uncategorized |
A few notes on technology, WikiLeaks, data mining, and privacy http://t.co/sd3YLRG
The people behind WL used to be all anonymous, but to raise money they came out of hiding. I guess their timing was off. This is a “speeding ticket” style of justice. You get a speeding ticket because you “might” cause harm from speeding. It’s a hypothetical that govts can enforce on civilians to discourage potentially harmful acts. However, the parade of hypotheticals being very large, one must be on the lookout for potential abuse by authorities. This tug-of-war tends to get redone with each generation because the incentives for the govt are so huge.
[...] A few notes on technology, WikiLeaks, data mining, and privacy [...]
Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely.
Take serious consideration that a CIVILIAN could obtain sensitive government information. If the AES256 file isn’t pure nonsense… then he’s doing little more than declaring war on the USA… And if someone actually breaks the code… would that person be considerate enough to keep it to themselves? Probably not.
One man, having the power to topple governments, by speaking a single [code]word.
I would trust my government with its checks and balances before I'd trust an individual who would use illegally obtained information, that was freely given to him no less, against a Nation.
And the scary part is Americans are supporting him...
If wikileaks succeeds in getting governments to acknowledge that their judicial systems cannot handle cyber-warfare then it will have done one good thing. Unfortunately what the internet has done is made the rabble believe in imaginary power.
You can't decentralize the internet because it is PHYSICAL, servers exist, IP addresses have actual locations and can be found and eradicated... the problem is the laws don't yet support it...
Seriously try and consider that the internet is in its infancy. This "freedom" will only last for so long, it was not here before... and it will not be here after.
The rabble preaches the mythical genie and the bottle, unaware that they're only making the case against them even stronger. There is nothing stopping anyone from destroying a network... it's only the amount of resources that are willing to be spent. Any network needs to have an inherent insecurity to allow others access...
Eitherway, eventually the genie will be put in the bottle, and then the bottle thrown into the sun. We will lose the freedom of the internet, the question is simply when.
I’ve thought the same about WL being just an elite’s way of finding those within their ranks who wish to hurt them and that it is also the US’ way of getting “their side” of the story out there as the most believable kind. But I’m struggling with the idea of it being just silly paranoia as well. It would fit, but is that enough? I think mainly that the system is a consequence of the masses rather than the other way around – that it’s hard to accept that we are creating such a bad world together. Example – there being a huge number of actionmovies and killing on TV might be a desensitazion ploy by the elite to make death and suffering more acceptible. BUT it IS more likely that it’s just us that think it’s so hella fun to watch it.
All in all I think that in order to make the conspiracies that we think might be possible, possible, there would have to be such a huge number of afraid people involved; and to think that none of them have ever been an unafraid and smart person who happened upon a group of other smart and unafraid people is such a sad thought. So I choose to believe, as I don’t have any proof for either of my theories, that Assange is one of those unafraid and smart people.
Etheralking
(perstephan@gmail.com)